Friday, June 14, 2013

E3 2013. DAY THREE.

Writing this on the bus, on the way back to the hotel. Expect bad writing and stream of consciousness-style, disorganized text. hey i'm not a journalist! So i dont have to care haha.

I planned on spending this day entirely in lines. You see, E3 has several types of demos:
- The playable demo. Basically it's a kiosk where you can just walk up and play.
- Guided demo. This is where the developer plays the game for you while you are seated with a bunch of other people. Since they can only fit a few people in the room where they do this, very long lines are quite common.
- Stage demo. This is where the developer takes the stage of a very big booth and just talks about their game.
- Press Conference demo. This is where all those wonderful GIFs on the internet were made from.

I have seen one to three, live. The fourth one, well, only on the internet. The press conferences are only for press. And for this attendance to E3 I was doing it as part of a business trip. Long story which I can't get into here.

Anyway, so for the first two days I have been more or less avoiding demo type number 2. The one where you have to line up. That's because I wanted to see the entire convention; I wanted to visit every little cranny of the place. On my first day I made the mistake of running into the Battlefield 4 thing where, while it was playable you still had to line up for a long while. I was avoiding anything that involved lining up.

Today, I just lined up for practically everything. Man, I lost a lot of time. It wastes so much time to line up....
There is one benefit though. You can score some rare swag after a presentation. I guess my goal today was 'get as many collectibles as possible'.

At the start, the first thing I went to was the Forza guided demo. Not that I haven't had enough of Forza by this point. Especially after Microsoft's wonderful pledge of support for Asia. Lol.

I was hoping to get a tshirt or something. I got nothing of the sort.

I found myself falling asleep while the guy talking kept on blathering on and on about car paint and how realistic their paint was. He's turning into Kazunori Yamauchi. Argh. Just race already....

Eventually he does play and I watch him dispatch of the AI like it was nothing. Earlier on he was talking about how the AI was trained by cloud servers. But I just watched him blow past them in two seconds. The only humanistic thing the AI did was try to bump him. Ooookay. Do we really need to pay for online connectivity to teach the computer to do that? The last game I recall with aggressive AI was Grid and I think one of the last Need for Speed games (not Most Wanted). I wasn't really impressed by their playthrough. I did enjoy playing the game myself, but Forza seems to be the type of game that bores me if I am watching someone else play it.

Next, I go again to the Playstation booth. Nope, still didn't want to play Knack. They were doing a Gran Turismo Academy challenge on stage where the winner would get to drive a real race car on Silverstone. They made GT look more exciting than it usually is. I guess it's always better to watch that type of game if there are people cheering and clapping, and if there is running commentary from a well versed announcer.

They should really put that in a racing game.

No one in line for Watch Dogs in the Playstation 4 booth.

I line up and watch their demo.

Five minutes in, I was falling asleep. I guess I've seen so much of Watch Dogs already on the Internet that they were running out of stuff to show off.

After seeng Watch Dogs, I step out and I notice the line is a bit short for Infamous Second Son.

The other day, I lined up for Killzone Shadow Fall and I was bored out of my mind.

So I didn't relish going through another potentially boring Sony property. But then again I was wondering if they were offering a free tshirt? I don't buy shirts often so it might be good to add to my collection haha.

I line up and wait for a bit. Eventually I get in.

Five minutes of talking from the developer....

Falling asleep.

Man, my feet are killing me.

Game starts.

Oh, nice cutscene.

Nice cutscene. Ok,....

Shifts to gameplay.

GAMEPLAY LOOKS LIKE CUTSCENE.

Holy crap. I wake up.

THis is the first PS4 game that did that to me. The game looked so impressive that it rivalled how impressed

I was with the Forza 5 demo the previous day. The lighting was so good. The graphics had no jaggies. The animations were okay. You could still see some Playstation 3 jankiness but if I had to numerically quantify it, it's a 9/10 on the quality scale.

I wish they made this game playable on the floor. It would blow people's minds!

On my way out I congratulated the developer and told them that was the first PS4 game that impressed me. He thanked me, then I asked if it is a launch game.

He raises his hands and says, "Launch window, man"

Oh no!

Well, that's game development for you.

Went out to lunch at Stella's which is a restaurant beside Hooters at the convention center. The food was very good, so I went back to LACC feeling that this was going to be a good day, even if I'm gonna spend it in line most of the time, hunting for swag.

Ace Attorney. No line.

No swag.

Dead Rising 3. Epic line.

Okay, I decided to line up. It was quite a wait. Eventually I got in and they started their demo.

Within five minutes, getting sleepy again.

The demo of DR3 was extremely choppy and unpolished. You'd think it was a 360 game. It just didn't feel like it was ready for showing to people. I would have been more impressed if it had some smoothness but i guess it just isnt done.

Also there wasn't anything that really blew me away about it. It was basically DR1 and 2 with a bigger environment. Also the areas were all drab, like the whole thing was set in Africa like REsident evil 5.
THey were highlighting how you can make weapons. Wasn't that in DR2?

You can drive a car. That's okay I guess.

Zombies. There are a million of them. Call in an airstrike....okay.

The sense of humor is slightly lost in this game. The only joke I noticed was the Shark mascot suit. Didn't make me laugh though.

Basically the whole game was brown.

At the end, they gave me a cap. HURRAY! I love Dead Rising 3! (Now I'm a game journalist!)

Next up, Batman Arkham Origins.

I waited over an hour in line for this. Eventually our line was CUT BY THE DAMNED MEDIA. That pissed me off a bit. So I walked out after an hour of waiting.

I regret that a little. But it was Batman. And besides, I probably already know how it plays....

Also, rumor has it that they ran out of swag to give away. So maybe it wasn't worth it to line up anymore.

(Oh geez, you know, Konami was playing that MGS5 track over and over again. Now, I can hear that screaming woman in the theme song in my head! LSS....)

I walk around looking for what else to line up for.

Ubisoft? Lines too long! argh. it's 3:30 already.

Sega? No lines and I've already played Sonic.

Square Enix? I see a line for Thief.

I ended up waiting quite a bit there. Once again the stupid press gets in first, but this time I was together with them in entering. Oh wow, they get to sit down and I have to stand up?

Demo starts. I am bored out of my mind again after five minutes.

By that point i was running out of time since E3 was ending at 5pm. So I had to go back to the bus. And here I am now, writing this blog post.